A bounded linear operator A on a complex Hilbert space H is a \(\rho \) -contraction ( \(\rho >0\) ) if there is a unitary operator U on space K containing H such that \(A^n=\rho P_HU^n|H\) for all \(n\ge 1\) , where \(P_H\) denotes the orthogonal projection from K onto H. U is called a unitary \(\rho \) -dilation of A. Such operators originate from the early work of Sz.-Nagy and Foiaş (1966) and generalize the usual contractions and numerical contractions. In this survey, we briefly describe their properties, covering (1) their characterizations, (2) the related \(\rho \) -radius, defined as \(w_{\rho }(A)=\inf \{\lambda >0 : (1/\lambda )A\) is a \(\rho \) -contraction \(\}\) , (3) their similarity to contractions, (4) properties of their powers on a fixed vector, and (5) their unitary \(\rho \) -dilations.